TheDarkOne's guide to installing HLDJ

Before beginning in this guide, it is highly recommended you download the tools mentioned in this guide and go along with it. At the bottom of the page are the links to HLDJ, dbPowerAmp, and Goldwave, full versions of Goldwave and dbPowerAmp can be found on torrent sites pretty easily as well (Goldwave has a limit to the amount of commands you can do). Please Note: Other tools can be used to convert, but I will be using these in this guide.

HLDJ:The Pro Way

1) Open up HLDJ2) It will come up with a message about setup, hit yes twice and it should come to a screen allowing you to set your HLDJ options. 3) Type something to identify your game in the Game Name collumn (IE: L4D, TF2, HL2 etc.)4) In the Engine, for games that came out after Half Life 2, choose source, for gold source games (IE: Half Life 1, Counter Strike 1.6) choose Goldsrc. 5) Choose a play audio key from the dropdown menuPROTIP: Buttons like Insert, Delete, Pg Up, Pg Down, Home, or End tend to be very good for this, as they aren't used quite as often in most games. 6) For the Game Directory, I generally go to C:/Program Files/Steam/Steamapps/*username*/Counter Strike 1.6/cstrike(steam)or if you are nonsteam just select the cstrike folder where you installed the game.7) Now, you will need to choose what folder you want to store your ingame music files in, and enter that in the Audio Directory portion of the window. PROTIP: Within your music folder, you can have folders which can be loaded ingame, using HLDJ, this could be useful with organization, as an Example I have a main music folder and techno folder within my converted music folder, in the main folder I keep soundclips, in the techno folder I keep techno, and in the music folder I keep other music. 8 ) After this it may auto detect some other games you have, hit the checkmark and choose what options you want for the Recommended Options window. 9) Now that HLDJ is setup, we can start getting music.

dbPowerAmp: Getting Your Music Converted

To get your music to work with HLDJ it first must be converted, for this we will use dbPowerAmp music converter. It is recommended that you put the music you want to play ingame in one central folder. 1) Open dbPowerAmp2) Choose Music Files to Convert3) At the next window (this is the most important thing), set it to the parameters below (depending on what game you're using it for)

4) Choose your HLDJ music folder you created earlier as the "Output Too:" folder and CONVERT! 5) Go play on the Umad Gaming Servers while the music converts 6) Now, that you have your music all converted and ready to go, we can move on to the next step. Fixing problems with what I like to call, "Earrape" quality.PROTIP: After converting the music, you may want to organize the songs a certain way by renaming them, this can help alot, especially when you have hundreds of music files. HLDJ orders the songs in alphabetical order by the filename.

Goldwave: Fixing Bass/Treble Problems

This part is very important, as it will keep you from becoming one of those people who's ingame music sounds like shit wrapped in tin foil thrown at an army of screaming babies. More skill at fixing music will come with practice.

1) Open up Goldwave. 2) Click Open in the Goldwave window and find the music you converted in Part 2. 3) Now, look at the waves. Your goal is to make sure those waves don't go outside the area they're in, gotta keep them in line. 4) If the Waves don't extend outside the lines, you may not need to do anything for this step, for that song. However, if they do, your goal is to get them between the outer lines of the small window they're in. 5) To do this^, click Effect-Filter-Equalizer6) A window should pop-up, now jiggle around with the settings a bit (A good idea if you're just starting out is to set the volume to -5 to fix your songs, with heavy bass stuff you may need to go to around -7 or even -10) This part is entirely up to you, but you want to make it sound as good as possible. 7) Now, hit O.K and it will process your choices and change the Wave. 8 ) If you're happy with these settings, click Save and your song will be saved. 9) You can always go back and edit some more if it is too loud, however it is much harder to keep quality when making it louder if it is too quiet. 10) If it is too quiet, a good idea is to re-do the conversion and editing for that song.

Testing and DJ'ing

For this last part make sure Console is setup, to do this right click your game in the steam "My Games" tab and click Properties. Click "Set Launch Options" and in this window type -console, to open console ingame just hit the ~ key. 1) Hit the Big Play Button on the HLDJ screen after choosing your game, start the game you've chosen. 2) Before you DJ in a public server it is a good idea to test your songs in a private single player server. NOTE:If you choose to test on single player you may need to change cvars in the game so that the music sound's better.3) Once you've started or joined a server you will need to use console to choose your songs. 4) The main console commands of HLDJ are la which shows all the songs you have and their corresponding numbers. hldjn loads the next song. hldjp loads the previous song. hldjr loads a random song. typing HLDJ in console shows all these commands and more. 5) Choose your song by typing la and finding the number beside the song you want to play. 6) Exit console and hit the button you set to play your song, and it should start playing. 7) You have just accomplished something, congratulations. PROTIP: It is a good idea to bind most of the HLDJ command to keys by typing in console bind (button) 'hldjr".